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Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - Evening Program

The Closest of Enemies: The United States and Cuba

Lars Schoultz

In the history of U.S. foreign policy, no relationship has been more dysfunctional than the one with nearby Cuba. Lars Schoultz, professor emeritus of political science at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will explore the U.S. side of this abnormal relationship, focusing on the recent efforts to normalize—and now roll back—relations with a country that is often referred to as the "closest of enemies".

Lars Schoultz, William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Political Science, received his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His area of special interest is inter‑American relations.

Schoultz has held a Fulbright‑Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Buenos Aires to study Argentine electoral behavior, two postdoctoral research grants from the Social Science Research Council to study United States policy toward Latin America, and a Ford Foundation grant to study U.S. immigration policy. He has been a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security and held residential fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and at the National Humanities Center. Schoultz is the recipient of the Tanner Award (1982), the Class of 1994 Award (1994), and the William Friday Award (2006), all for teaching excellence, and he is a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of the Grail/Valkyries, both student honoraries.

A prolific author, his books include Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America (1981), The Populist Challenge: Argentine Electoral Behavior in the Postwar Era (1983), National Security and United States Policy Toward Latin America (1987), Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (1998), That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (2009), and In Their Own Best Interests: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans (forthcoming 2018). Other scholarly writings have appeared in The American Political Science Review, The American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Organization, The Journal of Politics, The Journal of Latin American Studies, The Latin American Research Review, and Political Science Quarterly.